We’re happy to inform you about another great OffGridBox project related to Agroforestry in Somalia! Have a look at this video of our deployed Box. We’d love to replicate this in other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, so get in touch if you are interested.
Farmers in remote areas are confronted with a myriad of challenges which limit their capacity to produce the kind of yields they would like. To alleviate these challenges, OffGridBox has partnered with the Italian NGO CEFA under the Food Security and Sustainability in Fragile Situations (FSSFS) Project (funded by IFAD). A pilot was designed around our climate smart solution. In El Dahir in Somalia, an OffGridBox was installed at the farm of Abdirahman Mohamed Said - community’s local champion, where it powers irrigation systems, pumping water from a shallow well 200 meters away and boosting the water to irrigate the whole farm, generates electricity to run dates processing units also installed in the farm, as well as providing clean purified water for community consumption. The OGB is providing to the community clean drinkable water, free from the impurities that often cause health problems. The water can be sold in the local market and has a transformational impact on local economies. The solar energy reduces emission of GHGs, and it is also cheaper in the long run due to minimized cost of fuel and provides a potential to use harnessed energy for other purposes.
“This is the best invention provided to our community as it solves almost all of our farming needs, from irrigation to electricity, to clean drinkable water and runs the DPU,” said local date farmer Abdirahman Mohamed Said.
An important aspect that the FSSFS Project is keen to promote, is the adoption of sustainable irrigation systems that are affordable to the farmers. Sustainable in the sense that the systems reduce the costs and the water wastage that occur when using other systems of irrigation. In Abdirahman’s farm the OGB pumps water from a shallow well that is 11m meters deep to a water tank that is 200 meters away from the well. The water is then stored in a tank with capacity of 5000m3. Electricity generated from the OGB powers a pump booster unit which then distributes water from the water tank to the whole date palm plantation using drip irrigation.
The drip irrigation system was promoted as it delivers specified amount of water to the plant, thereby limiting the water consumption and optimizing the way in which the irrigation water reaches the roots of date palms. The system is also economical in the sense that it has reduced manual labour. Learning and training activities are organised around the OffGridBox for nearby date farmers that participate in the FSSFS program.
More information can be found here.